Dear Jerk:We stayed at a KOA somewhere in Texas that was amazing for two reasons - Pong, and a pinball machine that was out of order because it was jammed up with coins, which we jimmied out with sucker sticks.

I remember seeing my first one at a Denny's near Disneyland, and I'm guessing it was 1973 or 4. It was amazing!

Dear Jerk:We stayed at a KOA somewhere in Texas that was amazing for two reasons - Pong, and a pinball machine that was out of order because it was jammed up with coins, which we jimmied out with sucker sticks.

I loved finding jammed up machines like that. Quarters were quite a prize in those days! Gimme 5 bees for a quarter, you'd say...

My senior year of college I was really depressed, so I sat around playing this version of Pong. I got really farking good at it. There will be people in this thread who will say that they beat my score after a few games, but they are lying.

/It's not their fault: All the way forward in 2012 Sega of America, Coin-Op Division (not to be confused with the AM teams) still churns out over 80% of all arcade boards and almost 70% of the microprocessors.

/It's not their fault: All the way forward in 2012 Sega of America, Coin-Op Division (not to be confused with the AM teams) still churns out over 80% of all arcade boards and almost 70% of the microprocessors.

In the town I grew up in we actually had a laser tag arena (Quasar for those that care) which was ripped out for a 'Sega World'. Daytona cost £1 a throw, the gimicky R360 was £3 a go and realistically that is a lot of money to expect kids to pay out. And yeah it was aimed at kids, non-alcoholic 'cocktails' from a bar (for silly high prices) and such.

Now if it'd of had Pac-Man, Discs of Tron or something classic rather than just Sega's latest and greatest at over inflated prices... it might of lasted longer than 6 months.

/It's not their fault: All the way forward in 2012 Sega of America, Coin-Op Division (not to be confused with the AM teams) still churns out over 80% of all arcade boards and almost 70% of the microprocessors.

I wish arcades weren't on life support here in the U.S.

Build your own standup. It's relatively cheap, and loads of fun. I've got one next to my airhockey table with over 10,000 games. 4 joysticks, but the only people who ever play are my wife and I, since we have a no-other-people-in-the-house rule, but fun nontheless. We even feed it quarters.

This game was the first continuous tracking video game and it was AWESOME.It was a lot like Asteroids (another great game in its day) without the asteroids. Two players battled each other. There was a sun in the center of the screen and when you started a game you could change the sun's properties, high, medium or low gravity, anti-gravity, visible, invisible, and you could set continuous tracking or bounce back at the edges of the screen. There was a metal ten key pad like they used to have on phone booth phones that you used to change the settings. As long as you pumped in quarters you got more ships in queue.If you were good you could put your ship into orbit around the sun and just spin it on its axis and shoot (never touching your thrusters). Awesome game. You don't need great graphics to make a great game.

I worked for one of the later incarnations of Atari for a little while right around the time Atari logo T-shirts became popular with retro hipsters. I always wished my official Atari shirt had some sparkles on it so that the hipsters would know I didn't have to pay for it.

But I never wear it because I'm too cool to dress like a hipster, and also I don't want anyone to know that I may have played a small role in the death of Atari (the sixth or seventh time. It won't stay dead.)

Can anyone get me a job working for Fruit By The Foot? I think it would be cool to do the same thing to Fruit By The Foot. "Kibo, where were you when Fruit By The Foot switched to metric and went out of business the next day?" "I was in the Fruit Lab, working to invent a new color of artificial raspberry, when I accidentally pushed the 'DESTROY COMPANY' button."

We had the Pong IV I think, it had the wired paddles instead of them being built into the console.Also the "get off my lawn" joke is so old it's telling people to get off its own lawn. Just let it die already.

[img835.imageshack.us image 450x220]This game was the first continuous tracking video game and it was AWESOME.It was a lot like Asteroids (another great game in its day) without the asteroids. Two players battled each other. There was a sun in the center of the screen and when you started a game you could change the sun's properties, high, medium or low gravity, anti-gravity, visible, invisible, and you could set continuous tracking or bounce back at the edges of the screen. There was a metal ten key pad like they used to have on phone booth phones that you used to change the settings. As long as you pumped in quarters you got more ships in queue.If you were good you could put your ship into orbit around the sun and just spin it on its axis and shoot (never touching your thrusters). Awesome game. You don't need great graphics to make a great game.

Lets see... wrap around arena, ships only visible when firing and black hole in the center screen. I only lost twice.

[img835.imageshack.us image 450x220]This game was the first continuous tracking video game and it was AWESOME.It was a lot like Asteroids (another great game in its day) without the asteroids. Two players battled each other. There was a sun in the center of the screen and when you started a game you could change the sun's properties, high, medium or low gravity, anti-gravity, visible, invisible, and you could set continuous tracking or bounce back at the edges of the screen. There was a metal ten key pad like they used to have on phone booth phones that you used to change the settings. As long as you pumped in quarters you got more ships in queue.If you were good you could put your ship into orbit around the sun and just spin it on its axis and shoot (never touching your thrusters). Awesome game. You don't need great graphics to make a great game.

Lets see... wrap around arena, ships only visible when firing and black hole in the center screen. I only lost twice.